A Speculative History of Humanity: War and Peace

So, I’m going to write this article a little earlier than I should
because it touches on so many ideas I find fascinating, especially
linguistics and early civilization. It’s important to understand that
what I’m postulating here is far from fact. At best, it’s an
amalgamation of many good ideas, a few of which might actually be
valid seeds to bear fruit, in the right context. That’s why I’m going
to preface this as speculative history or just fiction really. But it
still has all the elements of a great story.

Greetings from Deckard Cain

Stay Awhile and Listen…

I believe that among other ideas, I might have found a clue to the
origins of the proto-indo-european language: proto-anthropologists. I
need to explain some things at a high level, then dive into some
details. I won’t neglect the occasional collapsed civilization and
catastrophic disasters, nor the archetypes accumulated in humanity’s
collective unconsciousness.

The two earliest major civilizations in our world were the Sumerians
of the Mesopotamian and the Harrapans of the Indus Valley, which were
only recently discovered in the 20th century. One was plagued by
warfare and the other vanished after being blessed by peace.

The Sumerian and Harrapan civilizations breifly coexisted, around
3,000 BC and undoubtedly knew of each other. There was significant
trade. In fact, until the discovery of Harrapan cities, the only
evidence we had were artifacts found in Sumerian cities. At that
point, we weren’t aware of that the Indus Valley Civilization (ICV)
existed.

Sumeria is known for its ziggurats, it’s cities, for fostering
agriculture and, most famously, the first system of written language.
It’s also the first known major civilization in the world. I provide
a compelling argument to explain why Sumeria may not be the first
Mesopotamian civilization later on.

Sumeria also occupied the most valuable piece of real estate the world
has ever known. This is what fueled the conflict for so long in the
middle east, which was blessed and cursed by geography. The middle
east brings inlets of water in which connect it to the Horn of Africa,
the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea
and to the far east. The middle east was and is the literal center
of the world.

The fastest way to travel and trade in the old world? Seafare. The
fastest way to meet the most people? The fastest way to accumulate
knowledge? The fastest way to collect the most taxes? The fastest
way to conduct the most business with the most people? Sit in the
center of the world. Identify this with a bit of geography, find a
way to occupy it and regulate commerce and you’re set for generations.
It is this power that people have been fighting over for millennia.

Harrapa is famous as a technologically advanced civilization that
vanished, only recently rediscovered in the last century, whose
language we are still struggling to translate. Their technology was
amazing for a civilization from 5,000 to 6,000 years in the past.

Some Harrapan cities had systems of plumbing, where houses were
connected with piping to carry away waste. They had toilets. 5,000
years ago. Imagine the knowledge that requires to engineer that. With
no precedent established from prior civilizations? If you’re going to
construct a sewage system, of any capacity or quality, that doesn’t
just require technology, an understanding of physics, and a modest
understanding of fluid dynamics.

Ruins from Mohenjo Daro

It requires forethought! You really can’t build on top of existing
settlement infrastructure for a major project like that. You’ve
really got to step back and plan where a good spot for a city would
be, which would offer the ideal setting for gravity to push water
through a system like that. And which would not be subject to
erosion, that would be a waste.

My point here is fourfold. First, this implies that the Harrapans
were experimenting with this stuff for a long time at a small scale
before implementing larger, more permanent systems. The lessons
learned to construct lasting civil infrastructure take generations.
Secondly, simply having the incentive to build systems like this - it
implies long-term stability and lack of chaotic change. Otherwise,
a society would simply never think about doing this stuff. It just
wouldn’t even occur to them and it certainly wouldn’t be a priority.

Third, these efforts take long-term multi-generational cooperation,
which may also imply longer lifespans. The Harrapans basically never
knew warfare, which may have been their downfall. So they obviously
weren’t forcing anyone to build this stuff. They didn’t seem to spend
all their money building temples either.

More Ruins from Mohenjo Daro

And finally, building cities to this degree of craftsmanship,
including other feats such as multi-story buildings, requires
cultivating systems of introspection, measurement and knowledge
propagation. They obviously valued knowledge, intelligence and
wisdom. It’s these observations, among others, that lead me to believe
these people had a kind of academic class. They seemed to understand
that they could improve their lives through technology. To the point
that the pursuit of technology itself was immensely valuable.

The Sumerians and so many others after them realized the value of
technology too. Yet, their lust for power caused the ruling class to
attempt to horde it for themselves when it was useful and stifle its
development when it threatened whatever good thing they had goin’ on
at the time.

But why? Why the contrast here? Why did the two civilizations have
completely different perspectives on the phenomena of knowledge, the
purpose of technology and the release of humanity from the constraints
of nature? Whereas it appears Harrapa sought to free man from the
suffering and chaos of nature for the benefit of everyone, Sumeria
sought to use technology to construct monoliths and towering empires.

And forget about Sumeria. What about this Shangri-la? To me, it’s
not so surprising that their buildings vanished, but it’s confounding
to wonder why their culture completely disappeared. I can understand
the cities, but why does it seem that their art and architecture
evaporated like a mirage without a cultural lineage or legacy?

What about their language? Why are there no remnants of intermediate
written forms? To this, I believe it is because the change was quick.
And it makes for a fascinating story, too. Absolutely epic.

There’s a lot missing from human history … IMO, pre-history, as
defined by a lack of written history, ended much earlier than we can
conclusively state. But something’s wrong. If that’s true, where is
the evidence? Why is it that we don’t see any widespread systemized
written language before ~4,000 BC. Where are the engineering marvels
of ages long past? There’s a good explanation for that, although
it doesn’t completely encompass the utter lack of evidence.

So, let’s take a trek back to 12,000 BC, the turning point at the end
of the last ice age. With google maps and a 60 year generation, it’s
always been a challenge for us to imagine a dynamic map over
millenia. We’ve only had accurate maps for a few hundred years.

Though, IMO, I believe that the world of 8,000 - 4,000 BC in
particular would have been particularly turbulent, to the point such
that the dynamic nature of geography would have been very apparent to
at least some of our ancestors at the time. More on this, in just a
second.

One picture is worth a thousand words, am I right? You can glean much
better info from NOAA’s ocean bathymetry maps. You can see several
landmasses in particular that are now missing. There’s the celebrated
Bering Strait, of course. And the lesser known landmass connecting
Africa’s Rift Valley with the Arabian Peninsula. Hmmmm, that’s odd.
Korea and Japan are touching. Ooohlala.

The Geography of ~12,000 BC:

And, if you’ve got a sharp eye, you’ll notice that there practically
is no Persian gulf. Strange isn’t it. It was like this, until it
flooded sometime between 7,000 BC and 5,000 BC, both gradually and
cataclysmically, I’m sure. Also, there are Arabian legends of
mythical sunken cities near Bahrain. Interesting, n’est pas?

Another interesting spot is just below the coast of Sicily. Why?
First because it’s below 50m depth. And at the time that it would be
mostly above ground (before 5,000 BC), this area would form a strait,
which would be perfect for controlling Mediterranean trade along the
coast of North Africa, at exactly the time when people would first be
capable of exploration. Sound iffy? There was a monolith discovered
here in August 2015!

Yet another interesting spot is just off the coast of Montpellier,
France. Why? Intersection of a river and a quickly receding
coastline. Also, English Channel, especially in the area around the
Netherlands. There’s Doggerland in the North Sea, which had already
bee cut off, but was likely wiped out by a collapsing glacial shelf
around 5,500 BC. There may be many more areas like this in
Southeast Asia and elsewhere as well.

But it’s really hit or miss. Probably not going to find monoliths
everywhere. You have to imagine what the world would be like at just
before that time. Imagine what the geopolitical situation would be.
Where are the rivers? Where do we know that there would definitely be
settlements? In general, in what average direction would those
inhabitants be moving, in the course of migration and trade? What
regions would be advantageous for trade? What geographic features
would be advantageous? And perhaps most importantly, how would the
ever changing geographic features affect the geopolitical situation?

The world is just beginning its transition. The conditions are not
ripe for humanity to tap into it’s potential and develop
agriculture. The weather is too turbulent, which wouldn’t have stopped
us, had we previously developed this skill. Furthermore, the changing
weather drives both us and our main food source to migrate.

By this time, people have almost certainly noticed that seeds grow
into plants, which should bear fruit. And that, by planting food
sources while following migrating animals, food can be harvested if
returning to the same place later. Or at least, this results in food
for someone.

Thus, karma is born …

See? Ug nice. Ug plant many seed, just for you. Just cuz Ug
nice. Ug cares. Be like Ug.

As for language, IMO, the development of spoken language was far more
fluid, chaotic and ephemeral than historians realize. Remember, the
average age at this point was pretty low, with some exceptions. The
paleo diet really is healthy for a reason, so we really gotta give
credit where credit is due. Thanks Ug. The lack of sedentary
lifestyles also probably gives these people a better life expectancy
than we would first estimate. Probably not by much though. Those
wisdom teeth really cap the shelf life at this point.

But overall, it can be expected, with low life expectancy, high
transiency and solely verbal means for transfer of knowledge, that
myth, language and culture are all ephemeral at this point. IMO, at
this point, vocabulary developed as needed. Word order and syntax
were fluid. There was no structure to enforce and thus, there were no
rules, nor would anyone know that there should be rules for spoken
communication.

In the ice age, ain’t nobody hittin’ ignore on
their newsfeed because you spelled your wrong.

As for vocabulary, we would likely draw inspiration from mostly local
& transient environmental influences that provided inspiration for
words and root cultural elements. With constant migration and terrible
memory from all the fantastic weed we would undoubtedly be hotboxing
in igloos, this vocabulary would be transient. Because the
communication systems were so diverse, it would be difficult to
culturally exchange with others in a meaningful way, further dampening
cultural development.

We only need words for what we know. As language requires time and
repetition to be propagated to others, we only teach what is relevant.
If what we come to know and what is relevant depends on where we are,
and if relevance & memory are determined by frequency of usage, then
the vocabulary before formal communication systems are established
would have high turnover. Except for a few terms, which would be
predisposed for both exchange with other small cultural groups and
retention by those groups.

So, apart from some universal phenomena derived from experiences
common to all humans, there would be little shared inspiration,
acoustic and otherwise, upon which to create vocabulary. Also, I
think there is an interesting connection between how we learned to use
primitive vocal forms of communication and modern digital forms of
expression.

This notion of shared experience is crucial to understanding cultural
development. The composition of each of our universally shared
experiences; the downstream consequential chain reactions; our
infinite yet spectrally resonant range of reactions to them.

Birth. Death. Sickness. Love. Fear. Friendship. Water. Light. Food.

These are cultural universals and are the most expansively shared
facets of the collective consciousness. These ideas are experienced by
all with near certainty: they are combinated with higher level ideas
and form a universal loom on which the web of individual psyche is
weaved. These are so universal that one can even say that fucking
space aliens - they will experience many of these same phenomena.

In contrast, the idea of collective unconsciousness pops up time and
time again to answer tough questions, though almost always
circumstantially instead of conclusively. Kinda frustrating. Really
need hard evidence.

Its moreso the collective unconscious and less so the presence of a
universal language root that caused similar morphological archetypes
to emerge across the globe. It’s these morphemes (read: word roots)
that are shared across so many languages that suggest the presence of
the Proto-Indo-European language. Likely, it’s a combination of the
sporatic emergence of these near universal morphemes from the
convergence of the collective unconsciousness with the viral nature of
knowledge that caused these morphemes to coalesce at the root of
Indo-European language family. The morphemes for cultural universals
that felt most intuitive in an unconscious way could cross linguistic
boundaries. They enjoyed powerful evolutionary advantages and may have
strengthened the presence of something that seems like a single
cultural, linguistic root.

Part Two: Calamity Echoes Through Human Psyche

That’s it for the first part. The next section covers 8,000 BC through
5,000 BC, including geographic reformation of the earth during this
time. This opened up the opportunity for cultural innovations, such
as agriculture, language, trade and boats. We got boats y’all. They
probably weren’t too good though.